Pilger: The West brings gifts of war and racism

The premise of the article written by John Pilger is correct, the hypocrisy of the West's intervention into Libya and the Middle East in general and David Camerons general bigotry is worthwhile exposing but I think the article veers off-course from the beginning when writing about Libya. When many have written that this is a war for oil, it hardly stands up to scrutiny. Firstly, for all intents and purposes it already was under foreign control , Libya's oil was already in foreign hands The New York Times reported in 2004 that ”The risks of entering Libya now are relatively low, in terms of politics and getting to the oil,” said Stephen Davis, co-head of the Middle East and North Africa section of Vinson & Elkins, a Houston law firm that is handling much of its Libya business through a new office in Dubai. ”There’s really nothing quite like it, since the terrain is already familiar to many American companies.” " More so, his government was on a mad push to privatise everything that was once nationalised. Reuters reported in 2010 that "Libyan officials say that in the past 10 years they have privatised 110 state-owned companies – a third of the total – and they want to go further. " Abdelkarim Mgeg, head of the Libyan government's Privatisation and Investment Board, said in an interview that "We want to put 100 per cent of the economy under the control of private investors but we are still far from that goal. The speed and time to get there depend on the appetite, capability and successes of the private sector," And look at what Gaddafi said about the rebels "These gangs made oil companies scared, run away and stop production." Something (a) that the west certainly did not want and (b) shows where Gaddafi's priorities lie, he was complaining on behalf of Western oil companies. Libya, since 2003, has been a client state of the West and more so, he wanted to deepen western control of Libya, not curtail it. Gaddafi's pathetic letter to Obama shows this up quite well, he said "What would you do, so I can follow your example." Nor do I think it is very convincing about intervening in Libya to stop China accessing oil. This graph shows it up quite well: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/libyan_oil China's reliance on Libyan oil is close to that of Australia. European nations are more reliant on Libyan oil than China and have more at stake if things in Libya "go wrong'. The U.S reliance on Libyan oil is minuscule. More so, I think Pilger is wrong on many other points regarding to Libya. In a roundabout way, he compares the "pro democracy rebels" (always the quotation marks) to that of the Mujaheddin or the Iraqi National Congress, by stating a rebel leader Colonel Khalifa Haftar is working for the CIA. Even if we take for granted that he is (we only know of some of his dealings twenty years ago), how can you compare that to the Mujaheddin and the Iraqi National Congress? The rebels are a movement, not an organisation and any movement will involve all sorts of shady characters, opportunists etc but just because they are involved, doesn't determine the nature of the rebellion. In Egypt, we had the same, figures in the movement were on the payroll of the US, that is clear but we don't, from that alone, determine the Egyptian democracy movement were CIA stooges. Because the Libyan revolution is based primarily on the bravery and revolutionary action of the youth of Libya, who through their own actions, liberated Benghazi and other cities. It is a popular movement with the support of the vast majority of Libyans. The National Transitional Council has been formed and plays a political leadership role, in a sense but they do not actually have any on the ground control in cities that have been liberated. So, in Benghazi, there is actually an absence of a central government and instead we have Libyans organising and arming themselves. The question of the leadership of the process and where it will end is not yet answered, NATO intervention certainly will help those which it finds pliable but it is not yet a shut book. We can probably only conclude that it is a shut book if the independent actions and self organisation of the Libyan masses is destroyed. Nor do I think it is particularly helpful to say "Statements by Western officials and media that a “deranged and criminal Colonel Gaddafi” is planning “genocide” against his own people still await evidence." The ones who were most using the term "genocide" were Libyans themselves and they had pretty good reason to believe it to be so. If we look through his statements, Gaddafi he threatened them with the death penalty and calling them "rats" and drug addicts. and pointed to Tianamen Square and Waco as examples for the type of violence he might use Gaddafi also vowed to hunt opponents of his regime, purging them "house by house" and "inch by inch". He vowed to "fight until his last drop of blood" and die as a martyr but beyond words, look at the actual record. When peaceful protests began in Benghazi, they were drowned in blood. This is some footage of gaddafi's armed thugs putting down a protest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BziVTiifPDI Misrata is an example of what the people of Benghazi were facing. The town has been under siege for over a month, because it dared to rebel. A doctor from there estimated that 1,000 people have been killed by the siege. The town has 550,000 people. Benghazi as the centre of the rebellion, certainly would have faced more intense violence. In fact, John Lee Anderson reported that 30 people were killed in Benghazi in the short time that Gaddafi forces were there. Lastly, I think the statement "the sound and fury from Washington, London and Paris has succeeded in dimming the memory of January’s days of hope in Tunis and Cairo." is unduly pessimistic. The Egyptian revolution has deepened since the Libyan intervention, nor has there been an onset of reaction in Tunisia. The movement in Syria has intensified, as it has in Yemen, we've even seen it in Iraq. Though, certainly the Libyan intervention played a role in allowing for a massive crackdown in Bahrain. If the Libyan intervention is NATO's attempt to strangle the Arab Spring, we can see that it has only been able to do it on a limited scale, because people power in the Middle East, the counter-weight to imperial intervention, has much momentum at the moment and NATO cannot at this time impose its will. Tim Dobson